There are many recent events that should draw our attention to the formidable battles currently being fought within the main religious currents, and the geopolitical influence on these battles in tomorrow’s world. Today, in most cases, it is those who are the most radical, closed, sectarian and reactionary who prevail; to the detriment of the weakest, and the most educated and enlightened. And in particular, to the detriment of women, and even more so of girls and schoolgirls, who have become a core issue in these power struggles.

In the Jewish world, the rise of the most sectarian movements, in Israel and the United States, is pushing the future Israeli government to believe that it is authorized to take the scandalous and suicidal decision to annex part of the Palestinian West Bank.

In the Christian world, the growing power of evangelists in the United States, Brazil and many African countries, has lead a shift toward the most reactionary orthodoxy of all Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, with dramatic consequences on abortion laws and policies related to the Middle East in these countries.

In the Muslim world, the increasing radicalization of a minority fraction of Islam, which imposes its point of view through terror, is increasingly driving women’s progress backward to a subordinate status, and it also driving men to an attitude of hatred for the West. From this point of view, we must closely monitor the ongoing elections in India, as well as the upcoming elections in Indonesia, which is the Muslim world’s leading power (ahead of India and Pakistan) and whose influence on Islam will only increase globally.

In the Indian world, the radicalization of Hindus, flattered by the ruling party in New Delhi, has sharpened the bloody conflict with Muslims, with considerable risks for mistakes and reprisals.

Paradoxically, religious radicalization causes, where there is freedom, the majority of the faithful to distance themselves from their initial faiths, and to seek out, each in their own way, a secularization of their religious practice. Except where they are victims of intolerable intimidation by extremists.

In a troubled world, the inability of democracy and the market economy to give meaning to the future (social, ecological and moral) opens the way to inextinguishable violence, mad barbarism, racist reprisals and religious wars.

If we want to save democracy, it is essential to give meaning to the human condition, and to fight with courage, against all forms of fundamentalism, against those who want to impose their way of religious understanding on others, and against those who want to drive women backward to a lower status in society.

In particular, it is essential, everywhere in the world, to fight so that young girls can go to secular schools and have access to modernity; that is, so that no signs of religious submission (and in particular no veils) or unbearable crimes (such as female genital mutilation or forced marriages) are imposed on them. In a very real sense, everything is at stake in this fight, for the present generation and for the next: to ensure that the offsprings of these girls, who are so essential to the future of the world, are free to choose their destiny and live without faith, or with a free and enlightened faith.

j@attali.com